ABSTRACT
Throughout the colonial and early national periods, Protestant churches, such as the Lutheran, Friends, Moravian, Baptist, German Reformed, and Anglican, established day schools for their children and charity schools for children of the poor. Several excellent ethnographic studies testify to the variety of institutional climates manifest in Christian day schools. Some schools are of such a separatist persuasion that they refuse to report enrollment data to state and federal education agencies. Researchers have discovered that although Christian day schools all profess the centrality of Jesus Christ and the authority of the Bible in their educational endeavors, they are quite different in many respects. Schools know why they exist and are able, perhaps more clearly than any other segment of formal education in the United States, to articulate their philosophy. The most pressing concerns facing Christian day school leaders are those of financing stability and spiritual vitality.
